Promising of quality life, these modern madrasas have reasons to interest the poor

Education is a child's fundamental right and the Madrasas in Hyderabad are taking it a step further from here. Promoting education in a unique way, they have introduced residential schools for children of Muslim minorities and other minority children. This, in fact, has seen instant effect on the academic priorities of poor Muslim families and lower middle-class Muslim families. 

Muslim families are now taking a great interest in enrolling their children in these schools because the education imparted is in English and the children get free food and lodging, which is not possible in the traditional Madrasas. Clothing and health care will also be borne by the institutes. The government, which is aiding the madrasas is spending Rs 1 lakh per student.

This makeover in the traditional form of education has seen instant results. The Telangana Minorities Residential Educations Institutions Society (TMERIS) has received over 1 lakh application for admission into residential madrasas from the year 2017-2018. Islamic scholars believe that the parents have opened up to the idea of building a better future for their children, who were till now struggling for employment because of lack of opportunities due to traditional education. These modern madras will provide them the knowledge of religion, which is a mandate in a madrasa, apart from introducing modern curriculum. Approximately 25% of the seats in these madrasas are reserved for non Muslim minorities like the SC.ST and OBC. While Urdu is compulsory for Muslim students, Telugu is a mandate for the rest of the students. Sports is also mandatory in the curriculum. 

The Telangana government is also encouraging these institutions. The government is said to have sanctioned Rs 425 crore for the academic year 2017-2018. MD Shafiullah, the secretary of the TMREIS, speaking to  the Deccan Chronicle said that close to 71 schools have been established by the government in the academic year 2016-2017. 121 more schools have been sanctioned for the next session. All these schools will cater to close to 52,000 students. Reportedly, many students from traditional madrasas are also enrolling themselves in these schools. 

Reasons why traditional madrasas are waning

Be it their course structure of their infrastructure, traditional madrasas have more than one reason for not being able to cope with the trend of time. Cash crunch is something that is bothering the institutes majorly. Most of the funds are in the form of donations from NRIs. Now, strict vigil by Indian and foreign intelligence on these funds have led to a choked inflow of money. 

NRIs also fear that their contribution may be misused and therefore have stopped sending money. Earlier the madrasa officials used to visit US, UK and the Middle East to collect Zakat during Ramadan. Even that has stopped due to security vigilance. The faculty in these institutes is also poor because of the meagre salary they offer. 

The introduction of these modern madrasas has worsened the situation even further. Parents now want to enroll their children into these schools. Some of them have even pulled out their children from the traditional madrasas and enrolled them into the modern madrasas. 

• telangana
• madrasa